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Friday, September 18, 2009

Clean Resume

It is important to keep your job application free from typo or grammatical errors. You may ask what is the big deal anyway with keeping your resumé error-free?

By not bothering to keep your resumé "clean", you are telling the person who reads your resumé that you could not be bothered to make extra efforts to check your spelling and grammar, hence you would be seen as "not being interested enough" in your job application.

A faultless job application will give no reason for the prospective employer to mull over petty mistakes that could have been easily avoided by clicking on the spell-check button.

By dotting all your I's and crossing all your T's, the recruiter will be focused only on your cover letter and resumé, allowing your application to be given due consideration.

Always make sure that you get your addresses right.

Get the proper address, i.e. the title of the recipient in your cover letter. Find out who will be the recipient of your job application. If you only know that your application should be sent to the Senior Manager or the Human Resource Manager, go the extra mile and find out who that person is. Call the company up or surf their website for more information. Personal touches never fail to touch, literally.

However, never ever spell the title wrongly or worse, to misspell the name.

A Ms Elisa Jon will not be amused if you spell her name: Mr Eliza John. If you want to do things right, do it right the first time. Never think that it does not matter. All the small things will add up to a lot and a job application tattered with minor errors all over will be regarded as messy and disorganised, jeopardising your chances of getting the interview.

Get the mailing address right too. The last thing you want is for the application to be sent back to you. Even if your application gets to the recruiter, getting the address wrong or misspelling some words in the address underlines the fact that you are careless and could not even copy a simple address onto the envelop and your cover letter.

Also avoid simple grammatical mistakes. By writing `I are' instead of `I am' you are only exposing your poor command of English. Get your subject and verb agreement correct too. Relearn the basic grammar that you learnt way back in primary school and avoid the mistakes when writing your cover letter or resumé.

Remember, some extra efforts to ensure that your resumé is "clean" will not guarantee you the job but will help to increase your chances of being shortlisted.